Our View: Keeping carp out of Great Lakes a national priority

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Rockford
Register-Star

June 26, 2010

Asian
carp have infested Illinois waterways for three decades and have been
swimming and eating their way up the Illinois River toward the Great
Lakes ever since. Finally, there’s a sense of urgency to deal with this
invasive species.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, whose home state of Illinois is most affected by
the Asian carp crisis, Friday urged President Barack Obama to appoint a
federal coordinated response commander for Asian carp. Durbin said
multiple federal, state and local agencies deal with these fish and
someone needs to coordinate the efforts and make sure they’re working
together appropriately.

Durbin said in a letter to the president that by appointing a
coordinator, it would signal preventing the Asian carp from
establishing itself in Lake Michigan is a national priority.

There’s finally a sense of urgency because these fish that can consume
up to 40 percent of their body weight in plankton a day are posing an
economic threat. If they get into the Great Lakes, they could ruin a $7
billion fishing industry.

A single 19-pound bighead carp was found this month on the wrong side
of an electric barrier meant to keep the fish out of Lake Michigan.

Michigan lawmakers and some environmental groups are treating the find
as if it were the Gulf oil spill. Finding a fish beyond the barrier is
a concern, but reasonable strategies need to be pursued.

Calls to close two Chicago-area river locks that connect Lake Michigan
to the Mississippi River system via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal
are shortsighted.

That’s more a political solution for elected officials who want to be
perceived as doing something than it is a sensible solution. Closing
the locks will not keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes and will
create about $4.7 billion in economic loss over two decades, according
to an analysis by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.

“From a fisheries-only standpoint, closing the locks would not be
effective in the long term for holding back the Asian carps,” Duane
Chapman, a research fisheries biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey
Columbia Environmental Research Center in Columbia, Mo., wrote in an
e-mail.

“It might make a difference over a short time period of days or weeks,
but not over the long haul, for a variety of reasons. And we don’t have
any realistic way to eradicate the carp over an area the size of the
Chicago Area Waterways System over the short term or long term.”

Chapman said there are other ways for the fish to get into the Great
Lakes. The Calumet and Little Calumet rivers do not have locks or dams
on them, so the fish can swim around the locks.

“Even under the proposed closure, the locks would be opened in the case
of high water, to prevent flooding in Chicago,” Chapman said. “Under
very high water, if you did not open the locks, the water would get out
anyway, by overtopping or bypassing the locks. Where the water can get
through, the fish can too.”

Eggs or young fish could be brought in the bilge water or ballast water
tanks of barges. Individuals might intentionally throw Asian carp into
the lake.

“The presence of a few bighead and silver carp in the Great Lakes does
not mean that those few invaders will create a self-sustaining
population,” Chapman said. “If you keep the number of invaders very
low, the chance of establishing a population is low, even if conditions
in the Great Lakes are conducive for survival and reproduction of these
fishes.”

In little more than a decade, Asian carp have infiltrated the
Mississippi River system. They make up as much as 70 percent of the
fish population in the Illinois River and are the most abundant fish
larger than 5 pounds in the lower Missouri River.

Illinois needs the help of neighboring states and the federal
government to deal with this potential environmental disaster. It’s not
time to panic, but it is time to make it a priority.